Numbers in the Cloud: Cloud Computing Growth Statistics

The latest market analysis conducted by Cisco has cleared the lingering doubts about cloud computing. The study revealed that more than 83% of all data would be based in the cloud (PDF) within the next three years.

The most intriguing part of this is that most of this will take place on a public cloud platform, that is, 56% of the workload will be in public cloud compared to 44% which will be in private cloud.

Cisco’s survey on data traffic indicates that all people, machines and other things will generate over 500 zettabytes (ZBs) by 2019, nearly five times of what they produced in 2014. It is estimated that currently, between four to five ZBs move across data networks and this is expected to grow by over 10 ZBs within the next three years.

The machines and things are also gaining popularity, making people believe that the so-called IoT will appear nearly everywhere. Within the next three years, IoT is projected to generate about 3.5 ZBs, which is almost a third of the data. It’s also projected that by that time there will be over 34 billion connected devices.

65% of data center traffic at the moment is cloud based, and this is likely to reach 83% by 2019. Workloads also follow almost in the same route. Most of this will take place on public cloud platforms.

The overall annual growth rate of cloud workloads from 2014 to 2019 is projected be 27%, but public cloud workloads are expected to grow at a 44% rate.

However, the growth of private cloud workloads will be slower, at 16% rate during the same period. It is also estimated that 56% of all workloads will be in the public cloud by 2018.

Cisco indicates that there is a possibility for most of the mission-critical workloads to continue being kept at private clouds or traditional data centers but public cloud is gaining trust thus increasing its adoption in the process.

Cisco analysts also state that some businesses might choose to adopt a hybrid approach to the cloud. For hybrid cloud platform, the business manages some of the cloud computing resources in-house, and an external provider manages the rest.

For types of cloud services, most of them will be applications. Research has revealed that software-as-a-service is and will continue dominating the services. Currently, SaaS dominates about 45% of all cloud implementations; IaaS has a share of 42% and PaaS 13%.

In the next three years, SaaS will account for 59% of cloud implementations, IaaS will account for 28% and PaaS 11%. All three modes will continue to expand so long as cloud computing continues to grow at such pace.

Researchers have also revealed that the SaaS approach is also being fueled by the ever-growing acceptance of public cloud. IaaS was predominantly deployed in the private cloud.

Initially, enterprises used to test and develop different types of cloud services, and cloud computing radically changed the way IT services were deployed.

This was the initial safe and practical use of the cloud by businesses. This was limited and did not risk disrupting the operations of its resources in the business.

The latest global market estimates and forecasts shed more light about cloud computing. In 2015, Amazon released a report about AWS revenues, and this was used as a benchmark to track global cloud growth.

In 2016, AWS spending on public cloud IaaS was close to $38 billion, and this is projected to grow to $173 billion by 2026. For the SaaS and PaaS cloud hardware and infrastructure, the spending is projected to grow to $55 billion by 2026 from the current $12 billion.

The worldwide public IT cloud revenue is projected to be $127 billion by 2018, and Managed Services is predicted to reach $256 billion in the same period. Emerging markets will take 21% of the entire worldwide public IT by 2018.